Winner of the Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book PrizeI was struck by the power of these poems’ vision, their brooding and sometimes stunning landscapes, and their stark eloquence and depth of language…(by) the wonderful and eloquent quality of the English translation by Richard Pierce…Mystery, striking imagery, and a fearsome atmosphere are recurring motifs in all the poems. Even the briefest glance at the first poem affects the reader forcefully along these lines: “the darkness emerging from behind the hills,” “purple hair streaming” (a recurring image)…”the air raid sirens began to sound again and we crawl like blind animals into the stifling shelters.”There is no specificity as to time and place, but a sense of menace and inevitable doom permeates the language, unnerving the reader even as she or he is riveted to numerous startling images…Then a great and emphatic line comes, with a sort of modern Shakespearean resonance in its depth: “No one has ever explained the riddle of the world.”From the preface by Lee Slonimsky,author of Pythagoras in Love"Stamatis Polenakis belongs to the tradition of poets whose every poem is a revelation, an apologia of poetry made anew, a fresh acknowledgement of authentic visions and melancholic convergences, instant flashes which last forever."Dinos Siotis